


Lord Of The Brows

by HenryMercury



Category: The Lord of the Rings (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Authorial Sarcasm, Bad Fic, Eyebrows, Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-29
Updated: 2014-01-29
Packaged: 2018-01-10 11:37:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1159256
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/pseuds/HenryMercury





	Lord Of The Brows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nightspark](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightspark/gifts).



Frodo awakes in a strange room, lying on his back. His spine is pressed uncomfortably against the hard surface beneath him, but he finds himself unable to shift to a more comfortable position. As consciousness returns to him fully, he notices that he is bound by the wrists and ankles. He strains his neck to try and get a look around. The room is rounded and stony, with a ceiling so high it seems to disappear up into outer space.

“Where am I?” he asks nobody in particular.

“You are in Isengard,” booms a voice from somewhere. “My name is Saruman the White.”

Frodo hears slow pacing footsteps and slowly a tall man with luscious white hair and an impressive wispy beard strolls into view. He holds a staff similar to the one Gandalf has always wielded. Frodo’s attention catches on the man’s dark, furrowed eyebrows. They loom over his cold eyes like heavy storm clouds.

“What do you want?” he asks. “Please, let me go. I don’t know anything!”

“Is that so, young hobbit?” Saruman asks, his deep voice echoing around the cavernous room. “The ring strung around your neck suggests otherwise.”

Frodo’s hands instinctively move to clasp the ring, but his restraints do not allow it.

“No,” he whimpers, as though his protests will make any difference, “You can’t take the ring away. Please.”

Saruman’s laugh is like thunder and lightning at once; a dark cackling.

“Take it? I never actually wanted the ring,” Saruman sneers.

Frodo’s confused at that. What does he have, aside from the ring, that would be worth anything to a wizard like Saruman? He can’t even offer information on the whereabouts of Gandalf or any of the others.

“Then what?” Frodo breathes.

The wizard holds up a hand, and Frodo sees the glint of a metal tool in his grasp. It’s only a small thing—a tiny razor-sharp dagger, perhaps?

Frodo’s face collapses in on itself in fear, his eyebrows pushing together as his forehead crinkles.

“Such an expressive face,” Saruman remarks.

Frodo doesn’t reply, just glares pitifully at his captor.

“I have waited a long time for this opportunity. You’ll forgive me if I enjoy it a little.”

Saruman brings his weapon closer to Frodo’s face and Frodo is finally able to see exactly what it is: a shiny pair of tweezers.

His brows furrow, then one leaps up towards his hairline in a display of confusion.

One of Saruman’s wrinkled hands creeps over Frodo’s forehead, pushing the limp curls of his hair back.

Suddenly, the tweezers are hovering right above his eye, latching on to the fine hairs of his eyebrow and pulling. Frodo screams in agony as a couple of them come free.  

“What are you doing to me?” he writhes around, still unable to slip out of his bonds.

“Gandalf never told you the _real_ purpose of the Ring, did he?”

“It’s powerful,” Frodo says. “It needs to be—destroyed.”

Saruman catches his hesitation.

“It pains you to think of destroying the ring, doesn’t it? You feel stronger with it. More graceful and sexy. This is the effect of the ring, as the dark lord Sauron poured all his vanity into the ring when he forged it. He even embedded one of his eyebrow hairs, from which the ring draws its supernatural power.”

“What?” Frodo stammers, his cheeks blushing rosy pink. How can Saruman know that the ring makes him feel sexy? Why would Sauron have put an _eyebrow_ hair into it?

“For it is not from the hearts or the minds of men, or elves, or dwarves, that power comes,” the wizard goes on, “but from their eyebrows.”

It’s a strange idea, but Frodo can’t deny that a lot of things suddenly make sense in light of it.

Saruman’s tweezers claim another couple of his eyebrow hairs. Tears of pain and devastation leak from the edges of Frodo’s blue eyes.

He considers Gandalf and his bushy brows; Aragorn and the shadowy overhangs above his crystal eyes, matching in with the rest of his majestic facial scruff; Gimli and his wild gingery forests; Legolas and his sculpted elvin masterpieces, standing strong and brown against the rest of his pale blond hair. All these warriors have something in common, and it is suddenly very clear exactly what that is.

“The ring of power,” Saruman says as he continues plucking, “remains faithful to its master—a lure to seduce those with beautiful eyebrows and bring them to Sauron.”

“So that’s why the ring doesn’t seem to affect Sam as much as it does me,” Frodo ponders aloud. “His eyebrows aren’t nearly as beautiful as mine.”

“Yours are some of the most dynamic brows in all of Middle Earth, hobbit,” Sauron says. It fills Frodo with pride for a split second, but then the painful tug of more hairs coming loose reminds him that if he ever escapes this torture he will be a mutilated, eyebrowless creature.

“You may have noticed that many of your foes are not so blessed in the eyebrow department as yourself,” remarks Saruman. “This is because there are sacrifices to be made for our dark lord. My spy Wormtongue, for one, is entirely without eyebrows, having relinquished them for the cause. In creating my armies of orcs, I am able to harvest brow hairs from tens of thousands, storing them up, ready for when the time comes.”

“For what?” A shudder runs down Frodo’s spine at the thought of that many orc eyebrows and what might be done with such gruesome power.

“Lord Sauron is disembodied; a mere eye watching over the lands of Mordor—but soon, he shall return to power. With the eyebrows I have gathered, I shall forge a giant brow to sit above his watchful eye, restoring his strength.”

Frodo gasps. “Nooooooooooooooooooooooo!” he cries in dismay, but there is nothing he can do. The world will end in fire as the eyebrows of evil rise, and the brows of all good men shall be singed and burned away. 


End file.
